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Vanderbilt expert on Ebola: Do not be alarmed

twilemon@tennessean.com
12:55 a.m. CDT August 3, 2014

A picture taken on July 24, 2014 shows staff of the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse putting on protective gear in the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia.(Photo: ZOOM DOSSO AFP/Getty Images)

Hospitals and health care providers received guidance Friday night on how to be alert for suspected Ebola cases in the U.S. along with procedures for diagnosis, isolation and infection control.

The official advisory from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is standard procedure whenever a new disease threat emerges. It does not mean that people in the United States are at risk.

The advisory sets basic criteria that health care providers should consider in evaluating possible cases: clinical symptoms, possible exposure through contact with the bodily fluids of a sickened person, travel to an area such as West Africa where transmission is active and direct handling of bats, rodents or primates from that area.

"U.S. hospitals can safely manage a patient with Ebola Virus Disease by following recommended isolation and infection control procedures," the advisory stated. "Please disseminate this information to infectious disease specialists, intensive care physicians, primary care physicians, hospital epidemiologists, infection control professionals, and hospital administration, as well as to emergency departments and microbiology laboratories."

Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University professor and expert on infectious diseases, said people should not be alarmed about Ebola.

(Photo:
Vanderbilt.edu
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"I have been putting this into perspective," Schaffner said. "You will recall that starting in the spring and even before, hospitals across the country and Vanderbilt, in particular, have been alert to patients who might come from the Middle East with MERS."

Although a man who traveled to Saudi Arabia became the first case of MERS diagnosed in the United States in May, no outbreak occurred in this country. Hospitals have standard infection control procedures, Schaffner said. A key question doctors should ask patients is whether they have traveled internationally and, if so, where, he said.

Many Americans have expressed fears about an Ebola outbreak in the United States on social media. Some have questioned whether medical missionaries who are U.S. citizens should be brought to Atlanta for treatment in a specially designed hospital ward for infectious diseases. But the disease is not easily contracted.

"It's difficult for a lay person to really bend their brain around the fact that a virus could be so deadly but before you become sick is not transmissible," Schaffner said. "It is transmissible only through very close direct contact with body fluids. It is hard for folks to understand this is not transmitted the way influenza is. There is no respiratory transmission of this virus. I think it is important to address those anxieties and provide reassurance that this is not a virus that is going to establish itself in this country."